Chapter 1702 — Slaying the Dharma Body, Severing the Dao Root

Shang Jun had fully withdrawn his aura; he stood within Shen Mu's shadow as though he did not exist at all.

Yet in that very instant when he sheathed his saber and vanished, the treasure hall of the Master of Lingguan Hall gave a thunderous shudder. The Great Luo Heaven collapsed and crumbled amid the quaking, and the treasure hall, bearing three Dao fruits and one Dao flower, plunged headlong out of the Ultimate Void, tumbling toward the Yuan World!

Beneath that hall, the crushed flesh and blood of the Master of Lingguan Hall could be seen writhing, reassembling itself!

"Shang Jun, you have ruined my cultivation and destroyed my flesh. One day I will surely repay this debt!"

The voice of the Master of Lingguan Hall came through. His flesh squirmed, then abruptly split into four parts, each bearing a Dao fruit or a Dao flower, and flew off in different directions.

Shang Jun flew out from Shen Mu's shadow, pursuing straight after the ancient god that the Master of Lingguan Hall's head had become!

At the same time, the Dao tree that the Master of Lingguan Hall had been cloven into rose of its own accord, trying to catch up with the treasure hall.

Shen Mu shifted his foot and landed upon one half of the Dao tree, pinning it down. At once a Chaos Hall flew out from behind him and suppressed the other half.

Both halves of the Dao tree quivered, and Great Daos surfaced one after another, all of them attacking Shen Mu together!

"Seventh Young Master, you want to seize my Dao tree? In your dreams!"

From within the Dao tree came the Dao voice of the Master of Lingguan Hall. The tree was like a Great Dao that had come alive, its assault ferocious beyond measure -- at the faintest tremor of branch or leaf, divine abilities and Dao techniques came hurtling forth!

Though the Master of Lingguan Hall's fleshly body had been destroyed, and his Dao fruit and Dao flower were escorting the remnants away, his Dao tree still possessed boundless might. The divine abilities bursting from mere twigs and leaves alone were enough to make even a Tianzun gasp in admiration!

Shen Mu held his sword one-handed and swept out a single level stroke. Wherever the sword light passed, every divine ability erupting from the Dao tree was sheared clean in two!

The thirty-third heaven of the Dao Realm -- the Tiandu Volume of Opening Heaven!

Hiss--

That one stroke fell upon the Dao tree, its might exploding forth. Half of the Master of Lingguan Hall's Dao tree caved in at once; in the blink of an eye the tree turned to chaos, evolving from Taiyi to Taiji, and then the Dao tree utterly disintegrated, becoming within the Ultimate Void a whole and complete world of heaven and earth.

Then that world of sky and stars, under the working of the Ultimate Void, swelled and collapsed at furious speed, on the verge of annihilation!

Shen Mu's primal-embryo divine treasury spread open and took that world in. The Guixu Abyss collapsed upon itself and swiftly devoured both the world the Dao tree had become and Shen Mu's primal-embryo divine treasury together.

Boom!

His divine treasury opened heaven and earth once more, evolving anew.

Shen Mu raised his head. The purple qi of Hongmeng hung thick and swirling, filling the divine treasury.

His primordial spirit and his flesh drew upon the Hongmeng purple qi the Dao tree of the Master of Lingguan Hall had become, growing without cease. His withered legs gradually recovered, and his primordial spirit too returned to the level of the Yaochi realm.

The other half of the Master of Lingguan Hall's Dao tree struggled with all its strength against the Chaos Hall, trying to escape, yet could not break free of its suppression no matter what.

Shen Mu walked forward and did the same again -- another sword stroke, destroying the other half of the Master of Lingguan Hall's Dao tree; first opening it into a world, then annihilating it, evolving Hongmeng primal qi.

He absorbed this half of the Dao tree, and his primordial spirit grew once more!

In but a short while, his primordial spirit had grown to the level of the Tianhai realm.

Shang Jun flew back, carrying the head of the Master of Lingguan Hall. The Master's temples grew upward like flight feathers; between his brows was a third eye, and within that eye a tiny figure -- bird-headed and human-bodied, like a golden crow, somewhat resembling the Ancient God of the Sun.

He also bore fangs, and those fangs had each taken the shape of an ancient god -- most peculiar.

Shen Mu was astonished; it was the first time he had ever seen such an outlandish form of flesh.

This Master of Lingguan Hall seemed an amalgam of the ancient gods of an entire universe -- his body seemingly able to decompose at any moment into ancient gods, one after another!

Yet the head of the Master of Lingguan Hall had already been slain by Shang Jun, and those ancient gods were dead as well.

"Shang Jun's saber is truly peerless in its keenness!" Shen Mu could not help but exclaim in admiration.

Shang Jun's Dao existed for the sake of killing. Every stance and every technique of his was meant to remove his opponent as swiftly as possible, with no superfluous motion, no waste of power whatsoever.

This was unlike other Dao techniques and divine abilities.

Among the Daos and techniques of the world, few existed solely for the taking of life; most pursued the essence of the Dao, and the might of a divine ability was often a mere incidental branch.

Learning is for use; divine abilities are but the usages and applications of the Dao.

Shang Jun's Dao of Slaughter, however, existed solely for killing. The single aim of every one of his Dao techniques and divine abilities was to finish off his opponent in the shortest time with the least power!

Many regarded this as grasping the branch and losing the root; yet in true combat, a man whose cultivation was higher and whose Dao realm was deeper might still die by his hand.

Shang Jun, for his part, was shocked that Shen Mu had in so brief a moment utterly destroyed the Dao tree of the Master of Lingguan Hall. Yet though he was shocked, he said nothing more.

An ancient being like the Master of Lingguan Hall was exceedingly difficult to kill. That he had succeeded in his ambush earlier was owed to Shen Mu, who had shaken the Master's Dao heart so that his Dao of Slaughter could pierce into the man's mind.

Had the Master's Dao heart not wavered, then even had the assassination succeeded, the outcome would likely have been a life traded for a life.

And even at the cost of his own life, he could not have killed the Master of Lingguan Hall.

For a being of that order, even the great calamity that annihilates a universe could scarcely grind him away utterly; his Dao tree and Dao fruit could pass through the calamity of annihilation without perishing.

The only true threat was the universe's calamity of birth.

Yet Shen Mu had ground the Master of Lingguan Hall's Dao tree to nothing -- something Shang Jun could never have accomplished.

"How can there be such a bizarre body..."

Shen Mu scrutinized the Master of Lingguan Hall's head, frowning slightly. "If, in the showdown with the Heavenly Court, a being like this should decompose his body and send ancient gods, one after another, charging onto the battlefield, it would be a fatal blow to Jing Ping!"

What worried him more was this: if the bodies of the other hall masters were equally formidable, and the young masters of Miluo Palace sent a few more of them over, who could withstand them?

Shang Jun could manage an ambush once; but if the Master of Lingguan Hall were on his guard, then even should Shang Jun attain the Dao again, he could do nothing against such a being.

"Young Master, this is his Dao fruit."

Shang Jun opened his palm. The Master of Lingguan Hall's Dao fruit floated up, trying to flee, but above his palm there formed a prison of the Dao of Slaughter, trapping the Dao fruit fast.